ATHLETICS: Exactly  how good is Sonia O'Sullivan running right now? Good enough to break her own 3,000 metres meeting record at the Cork City Sports, on her own. Good enough also to eclipse the fastest ever run in Ireland, and her own fastest anywhere since the memorable pre-Olympic effort in Zurich two years back.

Maybe it was the hype of the home crowd or maybe the conditions at The Mardyke. Most likely though it's that O'Sullivan is probably running as well as ever.

No surprise then that Saturday's performance of eight minutes 38.99 seconds took the loudest applause on an afternoon of quality athletics in Cork. Geraldine Hendricken came close with her own showboating in the 1,500 metres, but after a four-year absence it was all eyes on O'Sullivan's homecoming.

"Of course the crowd helped a lot in the home straight," said O'Sullivan, who had just run almost the entire seven and a half laps on her own. "I said I wouldn't look at the clock and just go with the crowd instead, run as hard as I could. And I'm glad I did that because sometimes if you look at the clock from too far out you can slow down."

O'Sullivan took great satisfaction in improving the 8:40.30 meeting record she set six years ago. "Well it's as good as 1996, isn't it? Better actually. Whatever that means. But yeah, things are going really good. Of course I'd much rather have run as fast as they did in Paris last night (where Gabriela Szabo won in 8:31.88) but it's not easy to do that by yourself." We remind her it was the fastest she's ever run in Ireland. "That's the fastest anyone's ever run in Ireland," she reminds us. "Except the boys, they've gone a little bit quicker."

Next up comes the National Championships in Santry at the weekend, then a 5,000 metres in Holland the following Saturday. And that's it done before the European Championship in Munich, starting on August 6th, when O'Sullivan will try to defend both her 5,000 and 10,000 metre titles.

"I can get a good hard week's training in now, and relax a little the week after before the 5,000 metres the following Saturday where I still need to get the qualifying time for the European's.

"Right now though the priority for Munich is the 10,000. Simply because it's on first. I definitely want to get the 5,000 qualifying time because I want the option of doing that as well."

Fellow Cork-born runner Una English ran a lifetime best of 8:54.73 in second place and is now chasing the qualifying time for Munich, and back in fifth Ann Keenan-Buckley clocked 9:11.93.

Ahead of the last event, the women's 1,500 metres, it seemed O'Sullivan would provide the only Irish victory of the meeting (though Mullingar's Mark Christie also won the junior 1,500 metres). Though Hendricken was coming off her breakthrough run (4:05.72 last Tuesday) the international field looked a little steep for the Carlow athlete.

Instead she took the field apart one by one. Also acting as her own pacemaker, Hendricken showed again that at 32 her best years are only starting. Five leading Americans, three Africans and some useful Europeans were all left in the dust as she won in 4:06.59.

"I feel now like I can just press a button and take off," said Hendricken, gaining in confidence with every race. "But there's definitely more to come, because that was cruising speed."

Hendricken's joyous mood was in direct contrast to an inconsolable Mark Carroll, whose own homecoming ended prematurely after he dropped out of the 5,000 metres with just under three laps remaining (Kenya's Willy Kirui won in 13:13.95). Complaining of rustiness and lethargy, Carroll is still hopeful he can get his season back on track, starting with the 5,000 metres in Rome on Friday.

"I could give you 10 reasons right now as to why I'm not running well," said Carroll. "But there's no one reason. I missed the winter with injury and missed the indoor season and I'm very out of touch at the moment.

There are others who remain bang on course for the European championships, including Robert Daly (taking third in the 400 metres in 46.20) and Ciara Sheehy (one better in the 200 metres in 23.37). Injury forced Karen Shinkins to miss the women's 400 but she remains intent on mixing it with the best in Munich.